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The Linux kernel contains a set of developer unit and regression tests (Kselftests) in the Kernel sources under tools/testing/selftest directory. These tests exercise individual code paths in the kernel. Even though kselftest’s main purpose is for developer regression test, testers and users can also use it to ensure there are no regressions in a new kernel.

Kselftest is run everyday on several Linux kernel trees on the 0-Day and Linaro Test Farm and other Linux kernel integration test rings.

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Archived Information - About kselftest

The purpose of kselftest is to provide kernel developers and end-users a quick method of running tests against
the Linux kernel. As of this writing, Samsung developer Shuah Khan is the project leader.

kselftest was discussed at the 2014 kernel summit (in August, 2014), with Shuah making
a presentation during the "core day" of the summit. Some followup discussions were held during an
"unconference" session the following day.

Source code for kselftest tests is contained in the directory tools/testing/selftests in the kernel source tree.

enhance and improve cpu and memory hot-plug tests to run in limited scope mode by default. A new make target to select full-scope testing. Prior to this change, cpu and memory hot-plug tests hung trying to hot-plug all but cpu0 and a large portion of the memory.

add a new kselftest target to run existing selftests to start with.

What's planned for 3.18 and beyond:

get feedback on the new kselftest target from the community

add more tests to be run under kselftest umbrella

identify existing tests under /lib and other areas that make a good candidate to be included under kselftest

Some of these could be run as a tool and/or a independent test with a few changes and some probably aren't like the /lib/locking tests.

As a goal, try to leverage existing tests and modify them as needed to run them as a black-box test (e.g: look into ways to make it run as a tool)

Greg KH sparked the kernel selftest idea, has been in the loop for the work done so far, and reviewed the plan for 3.18.

Sub-projects

There are some sub-projects or additional features, that some developers have expressed interest in, for
the kselftest system. Below is a bullet list for tracking the status of these different sub-projects:
(In parenthesis are some people who have expressed interest in this sub-project or feature) If a link is present then there's a sub-page to discuss that project.